


When Skies are Grey

by kaeorin



Series: Loki's Lullabies [155]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Autumn, Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Lazy Mornings, M/M, Mornings, Reader-Insert, Touching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:08:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,098
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26960074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaeorin/pseuds/kaeorin
Summary: In the middle of the end of the world, you join Loki at the window, and he holds you close.
Relationships: Loki (Marvel)/Reader
Series: Loki's Lullabies [155]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1678240
Comments: 9
Kudos: 109





	When Skies are Grey

Sometimes the world just got to be Too Much for you. It was happening more and more lately, of course, but even before things went to absolute shit, you could remember needing to lock yourself away and hide for a while before you could gather up the strength to go on facing things. In a sense, quarantine helped you with that a lot. Working for Tony Stark meant that he’d sworn you’d all keep your jobs, and keep your paychecks, and now that you were working from home, you couldn’t help but feel like your workload was significantly smaller. Staying home was, in a lot of ways, really lovely. You didn’t run into as many weirdos on the street or on the subway. You didn’t have to deal with Brandtley in the next cubicle over, or his weird mildewy coffee breath. And you were doing your part to keep people safe, by not being out and about in the world and catching or spreading the disease that was the cause of all this. In a way, you sort of got to hide yourself away from the world every single day lately.

But of course the news was a serious source of stress. Desperately, you tried to limit the amount of doom-scrolling you allowed yourself to do, but you still caught yourself skimming through headlines on one of your multiple sources of news way too often. Wasn’t it your responsibility to know as much about the world outside as you could? These things were happening to real people out there, so the least you could do was read about them. A few times, Loki had put his foot down, taking your laptop away from you and ordering you to come do something with him instead, but that always made you feel especially guilty. He was already trapped here with you for the foreseeable future; he shouldn’t have to babysit you and remind you to be a productive adult.

For now, you found a compromise. You allowed yourself only a few minutes on news sites each hour, but then you forced yourself to close the tab and look at Loki instead. He spent a lot of time in the same room with you: reading, usually, or fiddling with some other project he’d found to fill his long hours. You refused to allow yourself to be embarrassed about how much it helped, being able to look at him. The man was gorgeous—sharp, piercing, otherworldly and brimming with power. Of course your little human mind couldn’t help but be fascinated by him. If he knew how much you stared (and certainly he knew—you’d never assume that you could trick him), he didn’t let on. He nearly always kept his eyes fixed on his book or on whatever else he was fiddling with and gave you the space to take your comfort in the sight of him.

A lot of it was his mere appearance. You could spend days just trying to take in the sight of his face. He was a work of art enchanted with the breath of life. His eyes were always so clear, so all-seeing, and whenever he was looking at something, you couldn’t shake the feeling that so much more was going on inside his mind. You imagined that he was breaking things down into their various parts, analyzing them with a high degree of attention to detail. He was so smart. And his cheekbones were everything: sculpted as they were out of purest alabaster, they lent his face such an air of severity that when he grinned at you the difference actually made your head spin a little. 

And he grinned at you a lot. Maybe that was another reason you liked to look at him so much. When he looked up and met your gaze, the loveliest smile would creep across his face: sparkling in his eyes, then curling his lips, then brightening his entire face. Just the sight of it was enough to warm you. Hell, when you were alone, sometimes, and merely conjured up the memory of his smile, you could feel your cheeks grow warm. He made you absolutely giddy most days, and the most precious thing about him, perhaps, was the fact that he didn’t let on that he knew. 

Over time, as you grew more and more comfortable with him in your space, you found that you started to seek him out on those Bad Days. Where before, you would likely have shut yourself in the bathroom under the guise of taking a shower, or in the bedroom with the excuse that you wanted to take a nap, you began to gravitate towards Loki. Every time you reached out to him, whether it was creeping up behind him to wrap your arms around his waist so you could hide your face in his back, or nestling in closer to him on the couch and pulling his arm around your shoulders, or even just reaching out to take his hand at the dinner table, he always greeted you fondly. Had anyone else ever seen this side of him? Of course it was ridiculous to think that you were the first person ever to be Involved with Loki. Maybe, when he was younger, he wasn’t quite as bristly? Before Odin so cruelly told him the truth of his origins and his family crumbled around him, did he smile at others more often? Before he’d fallen into Thanos’s grip and suffered for who knows how long, did he allow people to get closer to him? Regardless, even before the two of you fell together, you’d recognized the way he carried himself, you’d known that it was meant to be a shield, and maybe you couldn’t help but try to get around it. And now he was perhaps your greatest source of comfort.

Outside your windows, the skies were grey. Clouds hung heavy in the sky, not in the way that threatened rain, but merely...autumn. The summer was ending and the days were getting cooler, and of course that meant that you had to accept that winter was coming. This morning, you woke up alone. Loki’s side of the bed wasn’t quite cold yet, but it didn’t hold enough of his warmth to make you think he was merely in the washroom and he’d be back any minute now. You huffed quietly into your pillow before dragging yourself out of bed. Today would have been a great day to spend lazing around in bed with Loki, but if he was awake already, you wanted to be too. 

You pulled on one of your sweatshirts to keep out the morning chill and padded down the hallway into the living room. Loki was standing at the window looking out at the city. This was a normal position for him. Early on, you had worried that he was staring out and ruminating on all the things that he was missing out on, hidden away up here as he was with you. Time, however, had done a good job of putting those fears to rest. When you joined him in the mornings like this, he often shared his thoughts with you, and not a single one of them sounded wistful or resentful. 

You joined him there at the window, and as soon as you leaned into him just slightly, he lifted his arm to wrap it around you. It felt almost automatic, like he didn’t have to think about it. Like his body always wanted you closer. He was holding a mug of coffee in his free hand. The smell wrapped around you like a blanket. A sigh of contentment slipped past your lips and you tucked your head against his shoulder. 

“You left me.” You kept your voice small, quiet, almost reproachful but with enough of a smile to let him know that you were only teasing. Sure enough, he laughed quietly and turned to kiss the top of your head. As he did, you reached out for his mug and took a sip of his coffee.

“I couldn’t sleep any longer.” He sounded sleepy, though. His voice never quite grew as hoarse or froggy as yours did in the very early mornings, but you still recognized the last traces of sleep. You gave back his mug so you could wrap your arms more tightly around him in an embrace.

“Bad dreams?” 

“No.” It was rare for him to tell you exactly what plagued him at night, but he did, at least, feel comfortable telling you when he had nightmares. It was easy to believe him this morning, but you didn’t loosen your grip. “Just...thoughts.”

You hummed thoughtfully into his chest. It took a conscious effort not to allow your mind to spin off into yet another spiral of anxiety. He was quiet and contemplative, yes, but he was holding you just as sweetly as he always did. It was easy to be sure of him. Perhaps that was strange, given who he was and the myths that surrounded him, but it was the truth. You could trust him. He made sure of that. Today, you did not press him to explain himself. Sometimes you could, and there was precious little that you couldn’t convince him to do for you if you made your eyes go just wide enough and asked him in just the right tone of voice, but you never wanted to take advantage of that. Of him.

After a long time, he spoke: “Are you happy? Truly?”

You pulled away from him before you could actually make the decision to do so, and looked up into his face. His brows were heavy as he stared at the streets below. He wouldn’t make eye contact with you. “Yes.” You opted for the truth, as much as your nervous heart wanted to hedge and equivocate just in case _he_ wasn’t happy anymore. “I love that you’re here with me, Loki. You make me feel like I have the strength to keep going even on those really shitty days. You make me happier than I’ve ever been.” You drew your lower lip between your teeth and searched his face for any signs about what he was thinking now. “Are you...not…?” Which would hurt more, you wondered: hearing that he wasn’t happy or knowing that he thought he had to pretend?

His eyes flashed to yours, and he looked suddenly fierce. “I am happy. Never doubt that. _Never_. You have brought things into my life that I never thought to dream of.” Heat and certainty suffused his words—it was easy to believe him. When he tightened his arm around you and ducked down a little to kiss your forehead, you allowed yourself to sigh again.

“But then why…?” It was hard to complete your sentences right now, caught up as you were in the feeling of him and also the worry you felt. But he didn’t need you to speak in complete sentences in order to understand you. Sometimes you got the feeling he didn’t really need you to speak at all. He understood, and he rolled his eyes a little as he looked back out the window.

“My mind took a turn this morning, that’s all. I spent too long _Thinking_ , you know, and convinced myself that you were unhappy. But if you say that you are, I will take you at your word. I’ll trust you to tell me when that changes.” 

This felt big. Like, _Big_. How often did he tell you about things like this? There were countless times where he’d fallen into some sort of funk and spent days at a time sulking or brooding—mostly before the world had changed, of course, but...still. Your heart broke a little for him, and for the way his mind allowed him to doubt how insanely happy you were, but it also swelled with pride. He was telling you these things. He was sharing more of himself with you. You blinked back a sudden rush of tears and held him so tightly that your arms began to tremble.

“It won’t change,” you said. You were more sure of that than you had ever been of anything else in your life. “I’ll show you, okay?”

He hummed something quietly and allowed you to reach once again for his mug. The two of you stood there like that for a while, holding each other, supporting each other, and sending out all of your gratitude into the universe. 

God, you were so happy.


End file.
